ECUADOR WORRIES COLOMBIAN UNREST COULD SPREAD

More Refugees Expected As Rebel Fighting Escalates

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- When bullets began ricocheting off the roof of his
tiny shack, Orlando Gomez decided that it was time to bail out of Colombia.

Caught in a cross fire between Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries
in the southern Colombian state of Putumayo, Gomez gathered his wife and
infant daughter and fled to Ecuador.

"We didn't want to leave, but any stray bullet could kill you," said Gomez,
who now lives in a shelter for refugees in this Ecuadorean town 15 miles
south of the Colombian border.

In the past month, about 350 Colombians have holed up in Ecuador to escape
fierce fighting back home.

Hundreds more cross the border each day and travel overland through
northern Ecuador en route to safer areas of Colombia.

Although the numbers may seem small, people here fear that as Colombia's
civil war intensifies, thousands will seek haven in Ecuador.

"This is just the beginning," said Edgar Pinos, a Roman Catholic priest in
Lago Agrio who is in charge of efforts to shelter the refugees.

Though the fighting in Colombia has raged for 36 years, Ecuador and other
nations that share borders with the war-torn country have suddenly become
extremely worried.

Their alarm is due, in part, to a $7.5 billion U.S.-backed initiative known
as Plan Colombia. Besides providing government aid to poor areas, the plan
provides for a Colombian military push into Putumayo state to attack
guerrillas and drug traffickers.

Washington is providing the bulk of the military aid for Plan Colombia,
including dozens of attack helicopters and training and equipment for three
elite counter-narcotics battalions. U.S.-funded aerial fumigation of
Putumayo's coca fields, which provide the raw material for cocaine, is
expected to start in December.

Ecuador, one of the poorest nations in South America, is especially
concerned, because it shares a largely unpatrolled jungle frontier with
Putumayo.

Once the fumigation and military offensives get under way, Ecuadorean
officials predict that violence, refugees, unemployed coca pickers and drug
production will spill into this relatively peaceful nation of 12 million
people.

In the last 15 years, the fighting in Colombia has forced nearly 2 million
people from their homes. But until recently, most have remained inside
Colombia.

Officials in northern Ecuador are preparing shelters for up to 5,000
refugees, but Defense Minister Hugo Unda Aguirre said that the number could
eventually top 20,000.

In another sign that things could get worse, the U.N. High Commission for
Refugees is setting up an office in Lago Agrio.

"Will we be prepared when the war really begins? Everything seems to
indicate that we won't be," wrote columnist Carlos Jijon in Hoy, a
newspaper in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito. "The truth is that this
island of peace is exploding into bits."

The Ecuadorean government is so jumpy that when 10 foreign oil workers,
including five Americans, were kidnapped near Lago Agrio on Oct. 12,
officials immediately blamed Colombian guerrillas. They later admitted that
the culprits were probably Ecuadorean criminals.

Two French hostages have since escaped, but there has been no word from the
eight remaining captives.

Panama, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil -- which all share borders with Colombia
- -- also are concerned.

Two weeks ago, a 12-year-old girl was killed and 11 people were injured
when a Panamanian village near the frontier was attacked by an armed group
from Colombia. On Thursday, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso made a
surprise visit to Colombia to discuss security issues.

Colombian guerrillas routinely cross into Venezuela to kidnap ranchers and
businessmen for ransom, and there have been reports that rebels have been
trying to recruit Brazilian youths into their ranks. Peru recently
uncovered a major arms-smuggling ring responsible for delivering thousands
of assault rifles to Colombian guerrillas.

In what they described as an "open letter to the world," church and civic
leaders in Lago Agrio called upon the international community "to unite
with us against Plan Colombia."

All of this has put Colombian and U.S. officials on the defensive. Last
month, Colombian President Andres Pastrana made a two-day trip to Ecuador
in an effort to calm the fears.

"Rather than to aggravate tensions, we want to eliminate them," Pastrana
said during the visit. "My government has come here to sow peace."

Phillip Chicola, in charge of Andean affairs for the U.S. State Department,
describes the current combat between rebels and paramilitaries in Putumayo
as a fight for control of the drug trade and insists that it has nothing to
do with Plan Colombia.

"The violence, the killings and all of the terrible side effects would
occur even if you did not have Plan Colombia, because they are taking place
even before" the plan goes into effect, Chicola said in Bogota last week.
"Plan Colombia is not the ailment. It is the prescribed medicine."

During a meeting of defense ministers in Manaus, Brazil, last week,
Colombian Luis Fernando Ramirez pointed out that border problems are
nothing new.

"The easiest thing for Colombia is to do nothing, but doing nothing is the
greatest guarantee that outlaw groups will grow and will cross borders.
They already are," the Colombian defense minister said at a news conference.

Indeed, Ecuador has long served as a smuggling route for arms traffickers
and drug dealers.

Townsfolk here admit that Lago Agrio is a refuge for Colombian rebels on
leave from the war. To attract guerrilla clients, one of the town's
brothels is decorated with a huge mural of revolutionary icon Che Guevara.

Thousands of Ecuadoreans cross the border to work as coca pickers in
Putumayo. Colombians flock to Lago Agrio to buy food, medicine and other
supplies.

Political analyst Segundo Moreno recently compared Ecuador to Cambodia,
which served as a safe haven for refugees and combatants during the Vietnam
War.

But due to the recent influx of war refugees, many Ecuadoreans in Lago
Agrio are starting to view the Colombians in a different light. They point
out that Lago Agrio is the center of Ecuador's vital petroleum industry and
fear that trouble on the border could scare away investment.

"The Colombians should solve their own problems. Why should we have to be
involved?" asked Menardo Sanchez, a doctor in Lago Agrio.

Part of the problem, analysts say, is that the Ecuadorean army has focused
on its southern frontier with Peru. A border dispute led to a brief
shooting war with Peru in 1995, but the two sides signed a peace treaty
three years later.

By contrast, Ecuador's border with Colombia is largely unpatrolled.

One Colombian official, who requested anonymity, claimed that the side
effects of his nation's war have been exaggerated in an effort to attract
development aid to an impoverished area that has long been ignored by the
Ecuadorean government.

Under Plan Colombia, the U.S. government has earmarked about $8 million for
Ecuadorean development projects along the border with Colombia. That figure
includes a small amount of aid for housing Colombian refugees.